Fort San Carlos de Barrancas
A National Historic Landmark, Batteria de San Antonio sits on a bluff overlooking the entrance to Pensacola Bay. The natural advantages of this location have inspired engineers of three nations to build forts.
The British built the Royal Navy Redoubt here in 1763 of earth and logs.
The Spanish built two forts here around 1797. Batteria de San Antonio was a masonry water battery at the foot of the bluff. Above it was the earth and log Fort San Carlos de Barrancas.
American engineers remodeled the water battery in 1838 and built a masonry fort on the bluff between 1839 and 1844, connected by a tunnel to the water battery.
With the election of Abraham Lincoln as President in 1860, and the secession of Florida in January of the following year, the Union garrison abandoned Fort Barrancas in favor of the more defensible Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island.
Southern forces occupied this site at that point and Fort Barrancas took part in the massive artillery duels with Fort Pickens in November 1861 and January 1862. After the Confederates abandoned Pensacola in May 1862, Fort Barrancas became an important base for Union operations into Florida and Alabama for the duration of the war.
Like other masonry fortifications, Fort Barrancas became obsolete with the advances in artillery and naval armaments after the Civil War. Today, Fort Barrancas is a unit of the National Park Service’s Gulf Islands National Seashore. A visitor center exhibit provides a history of the fort during the Civil War.
Two Civil War era buildings from the Fort Barrancas Cantonment, the fort hospital and an officers quarters, are now located on the grounds of the Pensacola Naval Air Station.
Information provided by Visit Florida and the Florida Division of Historical Resources.
